No one responded. They were all professionals, Alevy reflected, and each of them had at one time or another pushed his luck to the limit in the performance of his respective profession. They were, each in their own way, cool, distant, and businesslike. They had calculated the odds and found them slightly better than Russian roulette with a five-chambered revolver. They were all damned scared but damned excited too. Alevy could almost feel the energy, the anticipation of actually seeing if a chalkboard play would work on the ground.
Alevy scanned the south bank of the Moskva River. “It’s somewhere in that pine forest there.” He said to O’Shea, “Lower and slower, Ed. Turn in over the forest.”
“Right.” O’Shea turned away from the river and cut his airspeed, dropping two hundred meters of altitude.
Alevy glanced into the rear and looked at Brennan and Mills sitting in the murky cabin, scanning the terrain from the side windows. He had never asked their motives for coming or given them any sort of recruiting pitch. He’d only outlined the plan and asked if they thought it was feasible and if they wanted to come along, and they said yes on both counts. And that was that.
Alevy looked out the windshield at the expanse of dark pine forest passing below. The forest ended, and he could see a broad rolling field, dotted with what he knew were stone monuments. Borodino Field. He said to O’Shea, “We’ve overshot it. Swing around.”
O’Shea brought the helicopter to a hover, then swung it around 180 degrees and made the transition back to forward flight. They passed again over the edge of the forest, and without Alevy’s saying anything, O’Shea cut the airspeed further and dropped to two hundred meters.
Mills saw it first. “There. Ten o’clock, one klick.”
They all looked to port and saw a cleared swatch of ground running through the thick, dark trees. Alevy caught a glimpse of a watchtower and noted there were no floodlights on the perimeter of the camp. This was the age of electronic motion sensors and sound detectors, personnel radar and night-seeing devices. Prison walls had gone high-tech, especially in the Soviet Union.
Alevy said to Brennan, “Let’s get the wind direction.”
“Right.” Brennan reached into the leather bag and found a smoke marker. He slid a section of the Plexiglas side window open, pulled the pin on the marker, and dropped it out the window.
O’Shea put the helicopter into a hover at two hundred meters’ altitude and watched the white smoke billowing through the trees below. O’Shea said, “Wind out of the north at about five knots. About eight kph.” O’Shea added, “The watchtowers may be able to hear the rotor blades now. If we’re going in, we have to be lit.”
“Right,” Alevy replied. He threw the switch for the navigation lights and the blinking boom light, then said to O’Shea, “You know what you have to do.”
“Right.” O’Shea went from hover to forward flight again, keeping the engine rpm up and the blades pitched at a high angle to obtain maximum lift at slow airspeed without stalling. He banked around to starboard, approaching the northern edge of the camp perimeter on a parallel run from west to east. They could all see the watchtowers now, spaced about two hundred meters apart along the edge of the cleared zone.
Alevy said to Brennan, “Hand me the canisters.”
“That’s all right. I can do it.”
“Hand them to me.”
Brennan took four unmarked metal canisters from Alevy’s overnight bag and passed them to Alevy. Alevy examined them a moment, then ripped a protective yellow plastic wrap off their top lids and turned a timing dial on each one. He slid open his vent window and dropped the first canister out, about five hundred meters outside the northern perimeter of the camp. He waited a few seconds, then dropped the second canister, followed by the third, then the last canister roughly opposite the northeast corner watchtower. He was sure no one in the towers could see anything falling from the helicopter. He said, “Okay, Captain O’Shea. Into the camp.”
O’Shea swung to starboard, and they came around, passing over the watchtowers and barbed wire at 150 meters’ altitude.
Alevy said, “The helipad is at the western end of the camp. Keep on this heading.” He hit the controllable landing light switch, and a bright beam projected from the underside of the fuselage. Alevy moved the lever that controlled the shaft of light, and the beam moved across the treetops. By now, Alevy thought, the Russians were trying to contact them by radio, but Alevy didn’t have their frequency. The Russians were very jumpy and deadly earnest about protecting restricted airspace, but here in the heart of Russia, Alevy hoped they would ask questions first and shoot you later. He hoped, too, if they had seen the smoke marker, they took it for what it was supposed to look like, a landing aid to determine wind direction, and not for what it actually was — a means to determine where to drop the four gas canisters so that the gas, when it was released, would blow over the camp. This was one case, Alevy thought, where their paranoia about being attacked by treacherous imperialist forces was not paranoia. He said to O’Shea, “We shouldn’t draw any ground-fire. But if someone down there gets trigger happy, be prepared to floor it.”
“I know.”
Suddenly a beam of light rose into the air about a hundred meters to their front, then passed slowly over the fuselage, illuminating the cabin and, Alevy hoped, the familiar Aeroflot logo. Aeroflot and the Red Air Force being about one and the same, Alevy thought, that should cause no suspicion. The beam held them as they dropped altitude. O’Shea said, “That’s probably the helipad light.”
“Okay.” Alevy moved his landing light beam toward the spotlight, and he could see now, not three hundred meters to their front, the large natural clearing in the forest. Alevy worked the landing light switch and flashed the international codes for “Radio malfunction, permission to land.” He said to O’Shea, “Okay, Ed, let’s take it in.”
O’Shea began a sloping descent toward the helipad. “This is it.”
The ground light moved away from them, and the beam dropped, sweeping back and forth over the grass clearing, showing them the way.
Brennan was scanning with the night scope on his rifle, and Bert Mills said to him, “Is there a welcoming committee waiting for us?”
Brennan replied, “There’s nobody on the field. I see a log cabin at the edge of the field. Guy there on a flatbed moving that spotlight. He’s got an AK-47 beside him. But I don’t see much else.”
O’Shea banked to the right so he could make his final approach into the wind.
Mills asked O’Shea dryly, “Is this going to be as exciting as the last one?”
“No.”
O’Shea reduced power and passed over the log cabin at fifty meters, heading for the center of the large clearing.
No one spoke.
Alevy felt his heart speeding up, and his mouth went dry. He cleared his throat and said, “There will be no money in this for you, gentlemen, no medals, no glory, no official recognition, no photo opportunities at the White House. There will just be a hell of a bad time down there and maybe an unmarked grave in this Russian forest. So I thank you again for volunteering.”
None of them responded.
Alevy looked at his watch. It was 2:03 A.M. The camp would be sleeping, unaware that release from their long captivity was close at hand.
O’Shea pulled back on the cyclic stick, and the helicopter flared out, hung a moment, then settled softly onto the grass helipad of the Charm School. O’Shea said aloud but to himself, “Nice landing, Ed.”
40
The helicopter sat in the center of the field, its engines still turning. Brennan and Mills dropped down below the window.